China and Latin America: a problematic relationship?

In the last five years, China has burst into Latin America in a way different from what we are accustomed to - that is to say, with a presence linked to the ideological debate between pro-Soviets and pro-Chinese in the heart of left-wing groups - and which had remained embedded in our memory.

This slow transformation process began in the seventies, when 11 countries in the region, in general, supporting the standardisation inspired by the US (except for Cuba, already in 1960, and Chile), decided to acknowledge the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

During the following two decades, economic and commercial exchanges developed, though slowly and highly conditioned by the ups and downs of the Chinese process and the socioeconomic and political difficulties of the Latin American region.

However, in the first five years of the twenty-first century, we witnessed a substantial increase in said relations to such an extent that one could almost assert that they are enjoying their finest moment in history a circumstance which causes concern.